Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 121, No. 5/6, 11/1 & 11/15/2024 i Booklist

Last weekend, I had a wonderful time with my family. We spent time at the Gail Borden Public Library where my daughter crafted and we were able to get tickets for the Brookfield Zoo, which is a popular and amazing zoo in the Chicago area (thank you Gail Borden Public Library!). On a cloudy and cool day at the zoo, the animals were active. We saw lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!), and many other species. Later in the week, we went to see The Wild Robot, which was popcorn-filled and entertaining family fun (Peter Brown’s full series is on our reading list). Libraries always enrich family life by granting access to fulfilling experiences, some within (crafting!) and some external to the library (zoo tickets!). With our Focus on Crafts…

Older Readers A Dangerous Idea: The Scopes Trial, the Original Fight over Science in Schools. By Debbie Levy. Jan. 2025. 256p. Bloomsbury, $19.99 (9781547612215). Gr. 6–9. 345.7302. In the famous Scopes trial (1925), a smalltown high-school science teacher was charged with violating a recently enacted state law that forbade the teaching of human evolution in state-supported schools. Community leaders in Dayton, Tennessee, saw the trial as an opportunity to bring attention, visitors, and dollars to their struggling town. It did. Spectators packed the overcrowded courtroom, where William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, two powerful and popular orators, vied for attention and support, each defending his stance in the tug-of-war between Darwin’s theory of evolution and certain Christians’ religious beliefs. The judge refused to allow the jury in the courtroom for…

(S)Kin. By Ibi Zoboi. HarperCollins/Versify, $19.99 (9780062888877). Gr. 9–12. Feb. Critically acclaimed author Zoboi makes her fantasy debut with this novel in verse about the entwined lives of a Brooklyn teen and a fireball witch. The Cartoonists Club. By Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud. Art by the authors. Scholastic/Graphix, $24.99 (9781338777222). Gr. 3–7. Apr. Two luminaries of contemporary comics, Telgemeier and McCloud, join forces for this middle-grade comic about a group of friends who start a comics-making club at their school. Dear Manny. By Nic Stone. Crown, $19.99 (9780593308011). Gr. 9–12. Mar. Stone wraps up the trilogy she began with Dear Martin in this story about Jared, Justyce’s college roommate, who’s trying to square his convictions with his actions during a school-council election. Echo. By Adam Rex. Illus. by the…

The Dark We Know. By Wen-yi Lee. 2024. Zando/Gillian Flynn, $19.99 (9781638930587). Gr. 9–12. In this almost-heartwarming horror novel, Isadora Chang teams up with her last living childhood friend to save their hometown from a supernatural threat inducing suicide in the youth. Dear Wendy. By Ann Zhao. 2024. Feiwel and Friends, $19.99 (9781250885005). Gr. 9–12. Two college freshmen, both aromantic and asexual, run feuding advice columns while slowly becoming friends in real life. A love letter to chosen family, platonic love, and the aro and ace communities. Just Another Epic Love Poem. By Parisa Akhbari. 2024. Dial, $19.99 (9780593530498). Gr. 9–12. High school seniors Mitra and Bea have been trading poetry back and forth for years. Now Mitra’s secretly in love with Bea. Will it ruin their friendship? Funny, poignant,…

Philosophy & Psychology Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes. By Sunita Sah. Jan. 2025. 320p. Oneworld, $30 (9780593445778). 158. The author’s definition of defy is “to act in accordance with your true values when there is pressure to do otherwise.” We’ve been conditioned since early childhood to obey authorities, rules, and social norms. But what happens when we’re asked to do something that we know is wrong? While most people, according to Sah, envision themselves standing up for the right thing, scientific studies and history prove differently. Drawing examples from Nazi Germany to the murder of George Floyd to the Challenger tragedy, Sah shows how difficult it actually is to defy authority. The key to standing up for what’s right, says the author, is taking…

All the Water in the World. By Eiren Caffall. Jan. 2025. 304p. St. Martin’s, $29 (9781250353528); e-book (9781250353535). A cadre of scientists and staff, and their families, have been living on the roof of the closed American Museum of Natural History in a ravaged, mostly abandoned New York City, venturing down into Central Park to forage and hunt. But their sanctuary is destroyed when a superstorm breaches the city’s floodwalls. Only four survive to escape in an old birchbark canoe long on display: Nonie, 13; her 16-year-old sister, Bix; their father, who had been an architectural curator at the Met, and Keller, a Black entomologist. Caffall channels her considerable ecological expertise and wrenching personal experiences into her commanding, heart-pounding, and haunting first novel, which follows her ravishing memoir, The Mourner’s…

Adult Cemetery Kids Don’t Die. By Zac Thompson. Art by Daniel Irizarri and Brittany Peer. Dec. 2024. 112p. Oni, paper, $17.99 (9781637155202). 741.5. Facing a bleak future and a past filled with trauma, high-school student Birdie and her friends take out their frustrations on a game that can only be played while they dream. But when Birdie’s brother disappears into the game, she sacrifices everything and everyone to rescue him. Writer Thompson creates an interesting premise that mixes the ideas of Sword Art Online with the terror of Nightmare on Elm Street. While the overall idea is strong, some world building details, such as the reason for the bleakness of the real world or the origin of the alien-like gaming system, could be better fleshed out. Most of the energy…

Detective Sweet Pea: The Case of the Golden Bone. By Sara Varon. Art by the author. 2024. 208p. First Second, $14.99 (9781250348401). Gr. 1–4. Delightful animal characters populate this series opener about an artistic dog with a nose for clues. Comical scenarios, playful artwork, and fun characters make this early reader comic a real treat. Go and Get with Rex. By David LaRochelle. Illus. by Mike Wohnoutka. 2024. 48p. Candlewick, $17.99 (9781536222067). PreS–Gr. 2. From a Theodore Seuss Geisel Award–winning duo comes a hilarious picture book about a dog competing with two children in an alphabet game with unexpected twists and turns. The Hotel Balzaar. By Kate DiCamillo. Illus. by Júlia Sardà. 2024. 160p. Candlewick, $17.99 (9781536223316). Gr. 2–4. The daughter of a hotel maid finds herself swept up in…

Adult Fiction An Astonishment of Stars. By Kirti Bhadresa. Read by Roveena Gnanabakthan. 2024. 8.5hr. ECW, DD (9781778523663). This debut short story collection brings us 14 vignettes about the everyday lives of North Americans of South Asian descent. Except for one levitating auntie, Bhadresa’s characters are mainly ordinary—a girl who doesn’t fit in at summer camp, a couple that buys a restaurant, a neighborhood gossip—but their stories are transformative. Ranging from uplifting to devastating, each is a gentle character study that contributes to the collection’s exploration of the durability of family and community. The audio production is utilitarian, doing just enough to breathe these exquisite stories into the auditory world. Gnanabakthan’s smooth, even narrative tone makes for easy listening, but it lacks the variation needed to differentiate the assorted stories…

Memoirs and history and romance! If this high-demand list is any indication, patrons will be readin’ good in 2025. —Susan Maguire  Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman. By Brooke Shields. Flatiron, $29.99 (9781250346940). Jan. In a book that is part memoir, part research project, and part treatise, the iconic Shields takes on aging as she shares vulnerable moments and delves into the dangerous systemic factors that keep women down. Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World without Breaking Some Eggs. By José Andrés. Ecco, $26.99 (9780063436152). Apr. Chef and humanitarian Andrés (a Michelin-starred chef and founder of World Central Kitchen) shares wisdom from a lifetime in kitchens and war zones with insight, wit, and an appetite for bringing people…

Andromeda. By Therese Bohman. Tr. by Marlaine Delargy. Jan. 2025. 192p. Other, $16.99 (9781635424188); e-book (9781635424195). Sofie, a young intern at a publishing company, has a chance encounter with Gunnar, her boss. He is in his sixties, nearly twice her age, but despite this, Sofie sees something in him that calls to her, and after a colleague leaves for an extended vacation, Gunnar has Sofie take over her job. It results in her spending years at the company. But when Gunnar dies of heart issues, her world is torn apart. Half of the book is written from Sofie’s perspective, and the other half from Gunnar’s; what the reader thinks might be a tawdry tale about an inappropriate office relationship becomes something much more. It is a beautifully written book about…

Behind You Is the Sea. By Susan Muaddi Darraj. 2024. HarperVia, $26 (9780063324237). In this marvelous and moving episodic novel, Darraj portrays the joys, resentments, and yearnings of three generations of a tight-knit Palestinian American community. Blessings. By Chukwuebuka Ibeh. 2024. Doubleday, $28 (9780385550642). In the tradition of the great Nigerian writers who have come before him, Ibeh expresses a quiet, transcendent truth in this novel of a mother’s and son’s parallel challenges to accept themselves, having each failed to meet societal expectations. Catalina. By Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. 2024. One World, $28 (9780593449097). Brazen, smart Catalina is as tangled as the khipus, material vestiges of a sophisticated Inca system of communication, that thread throughout this tale, and her undocumented status is only one of the stressors she confronts in Villavicencio’s…

While manga for children is still a fairly overlooked publishing opportunity, there are ways to meet the demands for manga and manga-adjacent titles for young readers thanks to recent publications. Here are a few titles every children’s and elementary school librarian will want to invest in. The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store. By Tsuchika Nishimura. Art by the author. Seven Seas Entertainment. Gr. 3 and up. This fantastical look at the daily workings of a department store for animals evokes classic children’s tales such as Mr. Popper’s Penguins. New concierge Akino must do her best to meet the needs of a wide variety of animals, all of whom are actually extinct in the real world. Comical and heartfelt, this story about doing your best and working to understand others is…

Older Readers Darkly. By Marisha Pessl. Nov. 2024. 416p. Delacorte, $19.99 (9780593706558). Gr. 8–12. The Willy Wonka of board games wants to know: What would you kill for? That’s the question Arcadia “Dia” Gannon has to answer to apply for the internship run by the estate of Louisiana Veda, a woman known for the creation of 28 unsettling board games called Darklys. In short order, Dia is awarded the internship and whisked off to a small, abandoned island near London with six other teens who are tasked to find the twenty-ninth Darkly. Very genre-aware, Dia is prepared for things to get weird, and they definitely get weirder. This atmospheric mystery is combined with terrifying sessions of an interactive Darkly that the interns are intermittently kidnapped to participate in. Dia’s character…

twenty-five years ago, Stephen Chbosky shook up the coming-of-age novel with The Perks of Being a Wallflower, an epistolary novel composed of letters from Charlie, a precocious teen starting high school and struggling with the social expectations of the scene. When Booklist received Perks in 1998, it was evaluated as an adult title. It seems like we didn’t think much of the book initially—it received a relatively unassuming review, reserving any measure of praise for Charlie’s characterization and the book’s crossover appeal for teens. However, that appeal would prove to be more significant—Perks would be added to the Best Books for Young Adults for the year 2000 by YALSA. From there, Chbosky’s poignant debut broke out, spending an aggressive amount of time on the NYT Best Seller list, putting hundreds…